Fort Leaton
On our way to our new spot we stopped at Fort Leaton. Established in 1848 as a border trading post by a former Indian bounty hunter, it is an massive adobe fortress. The fort served as a trading post on the old Chihuahua Trail from 1848 to 1884. The adobe walls range in thickness from 18 to 44 inches! What a phenomenal amount of manual labor to construct such a large building.
Hoodos Trail
Not far from our new campspot there are a series of short hikes we explored. The first was Hoodoos Trail. In case you missed some of our previous hoodoo hikes, check these out. The Hoodoo Trail here in Texas is a short 1.1 mile loop trail that takes you down past the hoodoos, along the bank of the Rio Grande, up an old historic road to an overlook and then back to the start. The site is named for the unique geological features “hoodoos”. The word hoodoo originated from Africa and referred to rock structures with strange animal shapes. They sure are bizarre looking.
Long before the modern “River Road” that is Farm to Market 170 today, the trail was part of an old road used by border riders who were looking for stray Mexican livestock during a major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease between 1946 and 1952. Before the road was established it was a pack trail locally referred to as Muerte del Burro, meaning “the death of the donkey”. Yikes!
Closed Canyon Trail
When we checked into the visitor center we saw a brochure for Closed Canyon and thought it look interesting. Wow, it was! This is a narrow slot canyon that divides the Colorado Mesa in two. Colorado Mesa was created around 28 million years ago from the deposit of welded tuff (rock created by magma explosion) Millions of years of stream erosion split the mesa into two, creating the deep canyon.
The hike was somewhere around 1.5 miles. Deep tinajas filled with ominous looking water stopped us from going any further than that without vertical climbing gear. I’d rate this hike as difficult since there are a lot of areas of steep rock walls that you have to climb up and down. The further into the canyon we went, large sections of the canyon floor were smooth polished rock from the friction of swiftly moving sand and gravel during flood events. Because the canyon walls are so tall and narrow, little sunlight reaches the floor. We saw all sorts of plants amazingly growing in nooks and crannies of the rocky canyon walls. It was fun wandering around the slot canyon and incredible, we had it to ourselves!!!!!!
Rancherias Cave
I’m not sure how far we hiked on this trail, we just thought the area looked cool and pulled over to check it out. There is a trailhead and a definite loop you can do, in fact, the day we rode to Guale Overlook we saw the sign pointing towards this trailhead. Anyway, we already had a full day with Hoodoos and Closed Canyon, but still added this on. The hiking wasn’t difficult; we just headed up towards Guale Overlook from River Road. Once we worked away from the road and back into the canyon, we headed down into the riverbed towards a cave we could see off in the distance. After poking around and taking some pictures in the cave, we continued free-hiking down through the rocky bouldery wash towards where we were parked. Exploring is always fun and we were satisfied with our day of adventures.
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